Thread: A tale of two identities

http://www.yakima-herald.com/page/dis/285553420588436

Published on Sunday, March 5, 2006

A tale of two identities
By CHRIS BRISTOL
YAKIMA HERALD-REPUBLIC


In a town where a spreadsheet or a very good memory is necessary to keep track of all the dope dealers, Jesus Jimenez-Mejia stands out.

Not because he was the reputed mastermind of one of the largest-ever methamphetamine trafficking operations in Central Washington. And being a drug smuggler in Yakima, even one with the unusual street name "La Changa" (Spanish for female monkey), is not exactly an original occupation.

No, what makes Jimenez so memorable were his fingertips. And that's because they weren't his.

Following his arrest in 2004, authorities were stunned to find that Jimenez had two sets of fingerprints — his own and the ones from somebody else that had been surgically grafted on top of his.

"In 25 years (in law enforcement), I've never seen it," said Steve Thompson, supervisory deputy U.S. marshal in Yakima since 1992. "Heard about it. Never seen it."

A spokesman for the agency's identification unit in Clarksburg, W.Va., which reviews 50,000 to 60,000 sets of fingerprints a day, said surgical alteration of fingertips is not unheard of but remains uncommon, even more so than the deliberate mutilation of fingertips.

"I can't give you a figure, but it's pretty rare," said Steve Fischer, spokesman for the FBI Criminal Justice Information Services. "That's why I can't give you a figure."

Jimenez, 29, was sentenced to 10 years in prison two weeks ago in U.S. District Court for his role as head of a trafficking operation that smuggled hundreds of pounds of meth through Yakima from Mexico, California and the Southwest from 2000 to 2004.

Federal agents said Jimenez had been a target long before they were able to put together a case against him based largely on wiretapping surveillance approved by the courts.

"Any time you talked about methamphetamine for Eastern Washington, this guy's name kept coming up," said Mel
Rodriguez, agent in charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration field office in Yakima. "He was way up there in the food chain."

Last May, during a series of raids in the Yakima area, authorities rounded up more than 30 people connected in one way or another to Jimenez. About half were charged with drug-trafficking crimes; the other half on immigration violations.

Among those arrested
were Jimenez's wife, Miriam
Cabrera-Garcia. She pleaded guilty to possession of false identification documents and was sentenced to nearly 31/2 years in prison.

Another co-defendant, Jimenez's sister Marisol, was sentenced to 10 months in prison on a charge of being an illegal immigrant in possession of a firearm.

All three will be deported after they get out of prison. In addition, five houses in Yakima that were owned outright or financed by the Jimenez family were forfeited to the government by court order.

Authorities said Jimenez had a long history of trying to hide his identity, including the use of at least 10 aliases, five birthdates and corresponding documentation. But grafting fingertips was something special.

The grafts were relatively new. Jimenez had been arrested several times since his deportation from El Paso, Texas, in 1996. As recently as 2000, when he was arrested (but released) during a drug-buy bust in the parking lot of the Yakima Red Robin restaurant, his fingerprints were the same.

But after his arrest in 2004, authorities couldn't help noticing something was wrong with his fingerprints.

Thanks to photo comparisons, they knew who he was all along. And because his left pinkie for some reason had not been grafted, a quick match was confirmed.

Thompson, the federal marshal, called the grafts a "botched job."

"You can see where the old ones were at and the new ones were put on there," he said, describing the grafts as patches of skin. "It's not a natural flow of ridge. There were a lot of gaps and scars.

"The thing is, it actually makes his prints so unique it's like a tattoo."

Where Jimenez had the work done remains a mystery, although authorities are fairly sure it was probably by a doctor in Jimenez's native Mexico.

Also a mystery: the identity (not to mention well being) of the donor.

"Good question," Thompson said simply, adding that authorities doubt they will ever find out.


* Chris Bristol can be reached at 577-7748 or at cbristol@yakimaherald.com.

Another one of GWB's 'humble, hard-working people' who's 'family values' didn't stop at the Rio Grande?